4 ms·

Where do you think Ada - a mature and tested language - fit in between these 3 newbies?

wwright 6y ago
I don't know Ada well personally, but from what I've read, it's a bit less advanced than Rust at static checks, a good bit simpler than Rust and Swift but more complex than Go, and a little bit old-fashioned in approach (verbose syntax and all that). But I'm not very educated. I would say that Ada and Rust probably compete on some things, but given the history of Ada in industry, it's probably only in fields that already use Ada (aerospace and what-not).
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Rust lacks the formal specifications from SPARK. And SPARK 2014 will support ownership specifications. Rust is the less advanced one.
  - wwright 6y ago
    Good feedback there :)
- thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
  >> I don't know Ada well personally >> But I'm not very educated. If you don't know, please don't speculate. I use Ada professionally and I am experimenting with Rust. Rust has great promise and I am interested to see where it will go, especially as an alternative to C++. >> it's a bit less advanced than Rust at static checks Ada 2012 has comparable and in many cases more advanced static checks than Rust with the exception of memory management. This is especially true of the Ada type system (https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/strongly_typed_language.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/stro...) and design by contracts (https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/contracts.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/cont...). If you use the SPARK subset of Ada, you can use advanced tools to prove the correctness of your program. See https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/index.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/index.html Rust's borrow checker approach to memory management is novel and SPARK is acutally adding similar concepts to the next version of SPARK (https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark). >> a good bit simpler than Rust and Swift but more complex than Go Ada is a large and fairly complex language because it was designed for hard real-time, safety-critical, embedded systems and it has been in real-world use for 40+ years. I don't think it is that simple, but judging simplicity is subjective: what one person sees as complex, another person might see as simple. You can browse the Ada 2012 Language Reference Manual and see what you think: http://ada-auth.org/standards/12rm/html/RM-TOC.html http://ada-auth.org/standards/12rm/html/RM-TOC.html >> a little bit old-fashioned in approach (verbose syntax and all that). This comes from the Ada design philosophy to be explicit in everything and to prefer the use of keywords over symbols. "Readability is more important than conciseness. Syntactically this shows through the fact that keywords are preferred to symbols, that no keyword is an abbreviation, etc." (See https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/introduction.html#philosophy https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/intr...) Long-life programs tend to be read more than they are written. The Ada way is to make programs easier to read rather than faster to write. >> I would say that Ada and Rust probably compete on some things, but given the history of Ada in industry, it's probably only in fields that already use Ada (aerospace and what-not). This is largely true. Ada occupies a niche for aerospace and other safety-critical areas, but has not been widely adopted due to the "uncoolness" factor and the cost of most of the available Ada compilers and toolchains. I think the popularity of Rust has peaked some interest in Ada as well, but I am not sure if it will cause any change it where either are used. I would like to see Rust to continue to mature and get adopted for wide-spread use with multiple implementations and a language standard. As it currently stands, many aerospace and safety-critical spaces would not be willing / able to adopt Rust without a language standard and certifications. Here's hoping . . .
  - c-cube 6y ago
    The claim that more verbose, with keywords instead of braces/symbols is more readable is, imho, very subjective. It's easy to state "code is read more often than it is written" and jump to conclusions from there with no evidence that Ada is actually more readable. An alternative syntax could be helpful for Ada to gain more traction.
    - wwright 6y ago
      The “verbose syntax is good” stance seems to have been a lot more common back in 70s–80s language design, hence why I call it “old-fashioned” :-) not trying to make a judgement against the language (I personally love Cocoa-style method names, for example).
  - bilboa 6y ago
    >> This comes from the Ada design philosophy to be explicit in everything and to prefer the use of keywords over symbols. This may be true, but it doesn't contradict the claim that Ada is old-fashioned in this regard. It was an old fashion in programming languages to prefer words over symbols, and to try to make programming languages look more natural language-like to make them more readable. See Ada, Cobol, Pascal or AppleScript for some examples. This is much less common with newer programming languages, where it's much more common to favor terseness and shortcut syntax. It's debatable whether this is better, but it seems undeniable that Ada-style verbosity is no longer in fashion.
ardit33 6y ago
Ada is a superior language if you are trying to write safe code, but given that the tools (compilers and such) cost serious money, it will never get any adoption apart from avionics, defense contractors, and mission critical/safety type of software.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Free Software Foundation's GNAT is FREE and has a GNU GCC frontend to compile Ada - https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GNAT https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GNAT .

I don't know Ada well personally, but from what I've read, it's a bit less advanced than Rust at static checks, a good bit simpler than Rust and Swift but more complex than Go, and a little bit old-fashioned in approach (verbose syntax and all that). But I'm not very educated. I would say that Ada and Rust probably compete on some things, but given the history of Ada in industry, it's probably only in fields that already use Ada (aerospace and what-not).

pjmlp 6y ago
Rust lacks the formal specifications from SPARK. And SPARK 2014 will support ownership specifications. Rust is the less advanced one.
- wwright 6y ago
  Good feedback there :)
thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
>> I don't know Ada well personally >> But I'm not very educated. If you don't know, please don't speculate. I use Ada professionally and I am experimenting with Rust. Rust has great promise and I am interested to see where it will go, especially as an alternative to C++. >> it's a bit less advanced than Rust at static checks Ada 2012 has comparable and in many cases more advanced static checks than Rust with the exception of memory management. This is especially true of the Ada type system (https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/strongly_typed_language.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/stro...) and design by contracts (https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/contracts.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/cont...). If you use the SPARK subset of Ada, you can use advanced tools to prove the correctness of your program. See https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/index.html https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/index.html Rust's borrow checker approach to memory management is novel and SPARK is acutally adding similar concepts to the next version of SPARK (https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark https://blog.adacore.com/using-pointers-in-spark). >> a good bit simpler than Rust and Swift but more complex than Go Ada is a large and fairly complex language because it was designed for hard real-time, safety-critical, embedded systems and it has been in real-world use for 40+ years. I don't think it is that simple, but judging simplicity is subjective: what one person sees as complex, another person might see as simple. You can browse the Ada 2012 Language Reference Manual and see what you think: http://ada-auth.org/standards/12rm/html/RM-TOC.html http://ada-auth.org/standards/12rm/html/RM-TOC.html >> a little bit old-fashioned in approach (verbose syntax and all that). This comes from the Ada design philosophy to be explicit in everything and to prefer the use of keywords over symbols. "Readability is more important than conciseness. Syntactically this shows through the fact that keywords are preferred to symbols, that no keyword is an abbreviation, etc." (See https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/introduction.html#philosophy https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/intr...) Long-life programs tend to be read more than they are written. The Ada way is to make programs easier to read rather than faster to write. >> I would say that Ada and Rust probably compete on some things, but given the history of Ada in industry, it's probably only in fields that already use Ada (aerospace and what-not). This is largely true. Ada occupies a niche for aerospace and other safety-critical areas, but has not been widely adopted due to the "uncoolness" factor and the cost of most of the available Ada compilers and toolchains. I think the popularity of Rust has peaked some interest in Ada as well, but I am not sure if it will cause any change it where either are used. I would like to see Rust to continue to mature and get adopted for wide-spread use with multiple implementations and a language standard. As it currently stands, many aerospace and safety-critical spaces would not be willing / able to adopt Rust without a language standard and certifications. Here's hoping . . .
- c-cube 6y ago
  The claim that more verbose, with keywords instead of braces/symbols is more readable is, imho, very subjective. It's easy to state "code is read more often than it is written" and jump to conclusions from there with no evidence that Ada is actually more readable. An alternative syntax could be helpful for Ada to gain more traction.
  - wwright 6y ago
    The “verbose syntax is good” stance seems to have been a lot more common back in 70s–80s language design, hence why I call it “old-fashioned” :-) not trying to make a judgement against the language (I personally love Cocoa-style method names, for example).
- bilboa 6y ago
  >> This comes from the Ada design philosophy to be explicit in everything and to prefer the use of keywords over symbols. This may be true, but it doesn't contradict the claim that Ada is old-fashioned in this regard. It was an old fashion in programming languages to prefer words over symbols, and to try to make programming languages look more natural language-like to make them more readable. See Ada, Cobol, Pascal or AppleScript for some examples. This is much less common with newer programming languages, where it's much more common to favor terseness and shortcut syntax. It's debatable whether this is better, but it seems undeniable that Ada-style verbosity is no longer in fashion.

ardit33 6y ago

Ada is a superior language if you are trying to write safe code, but given that the tools (compilers and such) cost serious money, it will never get any adoption apart from avionics, defense contractors, and mission critical/safety type of software.

webmobdev 6y ago
Free Software Foundation's GNAT is FREE and has a GNU GCC frontend to compile Ada - https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GNAT https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GNAT .